Our aims

Doing good, helping people and spreading happiness is intrinsically woven into the fabric of everything balance does. The business was built to help people and we wanted to expand that concept, ensuring that we can link what we do to good causes as often as we can. As some of you know, recent events made us even more determined to do this - you can read more on our motivations in the ‘What we’ve done so far’ section below.

As this is such an important part of balance, I decided to set an ambitious goal for the business to act as the centre of everything we do, here it is…

Raise £1 million for charity and good causes through our services and products.

How we’re going to do it

1) We’ve spoken to and agreed to support three wonderful charities based in the south-west for 2019

2) We’re going to give a specified proportion of all proceeds for new services and products to be shared equally between these charities. This includes our events and the future launches of books and online offerings. We’re also going to provide free events regularly, where you can make a donation towards the charities to say thanks for organising them if you wish.

3) When you sign up for our events, we’ll encourage you to fundraise for our charities. Taking on a big fitness challenge is a great way to get sponsorship and acts as a fantastic motivator to get yourself through the training and the days themselves. We recognise that not everyone wants to do this so it’s entirely your choice to fundraise and there are no minimum amounts if you do, every penny helps and we’re truly grateful for your support.

The charities

We’ve linked up with three fantastic local charities who do great work and rely on support from people like you to enable them to keep doing it. They also have strong links to the balance ethos in their work, including many aspects of both physical and mental wellbeing. Click on each of the charity logos below to find out more about what they do and why they need your help:

Our previous fundraising work

Getting Chris active

On Christmas Day, 2017, Vicky's brother Chris was shot in an attempted robbery on her family's restaurant in Antigua. He was critically injured and whilst he miraculously made it through, he was also left completely blind.

As you can imagine, what followed was an incredibly tough road for him and we initially wanted to raise money for him to help him get a tandem bike so he could join us for rides and keep fit. The bike itself proved not to be ideal and the logistics of getting someone out riding with him meant that it was just a step too far that early in his recovery.

Instead, we put the money towards a gym membership and PT sessions at his local gym to help him build his fitness and confidence again. He regularly goes for workouts now and even runs on the treadmill. His determination to try new things and rebuild his social life is more inspiring to us than he realises. He's been to ukulele club, pub quizzes, walks every day, does his own home workouts and has recently joined jamming sessions where he plays his guitar and sings. He's keen to try a traditional tandem now so we'll be off for a test ride next month.

You helped us raise £740 for Chris. Thank you.

Chris test-riding a recumbent tandem. He loved the feeling of speed and was surprised just how fast it felt.

Penny Brohn UK

Sometimes our fund-raising efforts are on a smaller scale. Last year we ran a weekend course for PT's and chose to deliver it from the HQ of Penny Brohn UK here in Bristol. That way we knew that our venue hire costs and any money our learners spent would go towards the charity.

We're continuing to support them this year by donating a prize for their annual Long Table Lunch event.

You helped us put £700 towards Penny Brohn's great work

Doing it for Dexter

In 2015, Vicky, myself, Tom and Simon took on a range of challenges to raise money for Genetic Alliance UK. This was because Tom's wonderful son Dexter was born with a rare genetic disorder which affects him in a variety of ways, bringing lots of challenges to the families' life. We wanted to support the great work Genetic Alliance do in bringing together research and funding for a range of rare genetic disorders. This included running a marathon, cycling from London to Brussels and completing the Three Peaks and cycling the 450-miles in between over four days.